Sun Poisoning

It was a big ball of fire in the sky, the sun.

I peeled away my winter clothing to let it douse my skin in its searing rays
as hot as the flames that burned my house down

seven years ago around this time of the year.

Has it been that long already? Has it been that long since the day I ran onto the lawn, pajama-clad, to see thirty-foot tall flames eat their way into the vinyl siding of the house, to smell ashes, to hear windows explode into the frosty midnight air of early spring?

I guess it has.

Is the sun in the sky today really the same sun as the one that shone this time of year two years ago?
Two years ago, when I felt successful in my naive endeavors, when the world was packed neatly in my fingertips to lay out on ivory keys, to scribble out on aced papers, to trace quietly down sweaty spines in dark houses..

I guess it is.

I wanted it to burn through me today just like it had burned our skin this time of last year, when we slept on sheets in forgotten dugouts under the raging sun. I wanted it to burn like your kiss goodbye,
burn like the love I can't feel anymore, burn like the excitement I can't remember,

burn my permafrost bones down into liquid puddles.

But it didn't.
It burned like the failure I know so well, like the stinging isolation that contrasted the blooming trees.
It burned like the shock of being left, burned like the feeling of having lost.


Well,
maybe the sun is different this year.